Introduction

Hello and welcome to my Nautilus guide. My name is Panost and I'm a s4 Master player on the EUNE server who mains jungle and mid. I decided to make a guide for the titan of the depths since there were no featured guides as of now and wanted to share the love for the champion that has been my most played during season2 and season3. Let's kick this off.

Here are my stats with him since his release.

Season 3:

Season 2:

Smurf account(Diamond 2):

Follow me on twitch: www.twitch.tv/panost

So why do you see so many nautilus players recently in competitive play and soloq?
Well the answer is simple as that: buffs.
Nautilus was a champion with a really weak early game jungle clear and was susceptible to counter jungling. However, riot threw some buffs to the right direction, reducing the cooldown on his Titan's Wrath(W) on earlier ranks making it easily spammable for the first few jungle clears. Moreover, his base armor was increased from 15 to 19, a huge buff for his early survivability.

Why is nautilus strong anyway?
His 4 forms of crowd control make him a beast at 2v2/3v3 brawls during every stage of the game. His passive is insane during team fights and a well placed Depth Charge(R) can shut down an entire team, let alone his gap closing Dredge Line(Q) that can be a great initiating or escaping tool and his aoe slowing Riptide(E). All those combined with strong damage during early game make nautilus one of the most fearsome picks in current soloq and a valid candidate for competitive play.

So to sum up:Pros

4 forms of crowd control.

Good initiation with Dredge Line(Q)/Depth Charge(R)

Inevitable ganks with boots of mobility, you can just run through a ward and the enemy won't have time to react with certain exceptions.

Once caught, you can't escape from nautilus, even when flash is up.

Nice skins!

Cons

Ridiculously low movement speed.

Tragic basic autoattack animation/damage(without W on).

Low damage late game (unless you build the damage items listed below).

Can be invaded and completely shut down if your lanes are weak and can't react.

Falls off hard if you haven't snowballed enough during the early game and don't have core items completed.

Tier 1Tough Skin(2/2): Really great for jungling, it reduces the damage you take while jungling and is quite strong early on, also leading to Bladed Armor.Block(2/2): Reduces damage from autoattacks, also leading to unyielding. Pretty strong combination of masteries.

Tier 2Unyielding(1/1): Really important damage mitigation talent, should not go unnoticed on any tank jungler.Veteran's Scar(3/3): 36 extra hp, nothing remarkable for 3 points considering it gave 30 for just 1 in season 3. However it leads to juggernaut which is a must have for every tank jungler.

Tier 3Juggernaut(1/1): Since my suggested build contains a locket, spirit of the ancient golemn, randuin's and spirit visage which all give health, this talent is a must have due to the 3% max HP increase.Hardiness(3/3): +5 armor is decent during the earlier stages of the games when clearing jungle and when nautilus is weak.Resistance(3/3): This talent now leads to 4% AoE magic damage reduction, making it quite essential for tanks that soak damage.

Tier 4Evasive(1/1): As stated above, you need this in order to be able to soak damage during team fights. If the enemy team has mostly single target burst, you can skip this and also Resistance, however this is highly unlikely with the likes of champions such as orianna, gragas, leblanc (W/mimiced W do tons of damage at all stages of the game) that are seeing big play in soloq and competitive scene.

Tier 5Tenacious(4/4): This talent seems overpowered and it actually is, as it gives 4 armor and 2 magic resist per nearby enemy champion. Which means that in a bot lane gank u get 8 and 4 armor and MR respectively and in team fights 20 armor and 10 MR. Always get that

Tier 6Legendary Guardian(1/1): Decently strong talent, gives you 15% CC reduction, together with ancient golemn it should do the trick concerning crowd controls.

Utility tree

Tier 1Fleet of Foot(3/3): +1,5% movement speed, nothing great but it adds up to the low base movement speed that nautilus suffers from.Phasewalker(1/1): Okish talent, nothing great about it.

Tier 2Summoner's Insight(3/3): 10% summoner spells cooldown reduction, making your flash and smite available more often.Alchemist(1/1): Provides some extra sustain early on through potions and some extra duration on your elixirs at late game. Personal preference.

Tier 3Runic Affinity(1/1): 20% increase in neutral buff duration is very good on pretty much every jungler as you can farm/gank more efficiently the longer you have blue/red buff respectively.

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0 Utility

6/24/0: This mastery build is aiming at the extra damage/sustain on camps that you can get through the offense tree with 7 points while expanding a bit more on the defense tree which on most parts remain the same as the 0/21/9 page.

On offense tree:

Tier 1Fury(4/4): Attack speed on nautilus has always been good as it can proc the shield dot more times, it also got buffed from 4% to 5%. I prefer this over 5% CDR but it's a personal choice.Butcher(1/1): Extra damage on camps is always useful the champion is not particularly strong at jungle farming.

Tier 2Bladed Armor(1/1): I feel like this talent has become stronger due to its % hp, however it's not stated if the damage is physical or true. Strong anyway.

Tier 3Oppression(1/1): Nautilus is a tanky crowd controler and this talent suits him perfectly since most of the targets will be slowed or snared by his E/passive respectively, making him mitigate 3% extra damage more.

[title]Tier 4/title]Reinforced Armor(1/1): Not noticeable until mid-late game when the ad carries will have their IE-PD/shyv completed. It can be even more useful in double ad comps and should be prioritised over other talents in such situations.

Summoner Sets

Primary Set

Explanation:: Summoner spell with overpowered utility for creating the plays or escaping.: Basic Jungling tool for securing neutral buffs, baron and dragon as it deals true damage on minions and monsters. Be sure you know the smite damage values so that you don't get outsmited. More info on the dedicated Smite chapter below.

Other viable choices: I've seen exhaust quite some times but it's not even close to being useful, when an enemy is caught by nautilus he will not be able to escape anyway with 4 different forms of CC unless it's a champion with a lot of escapes.

If you are a teleport fan, go for it. This spell can make or break games, can shut down enemy ganks and can give you the advantage. Only take it if you know how to make proper use of it. Always take the mastery for improved teleport as it reduces it's casting time by 0.5seconds which is a lot. Also when you take teleport, should outscale homeguard as an enchantment and it should be rushed after spirit of the ancient golem to make the maximum out of teleport.

Same with exhaust, nautilus chasing should be enough to secure the kills combined with the CC the champion offers. Ignoring unit collision is actually quite strong and it should be stressed. DO NOT FORGET to get summoner's wrath if you pick this up.

NOT viable: Can be useful in certain cases when the laner has limited damage but it's utility mid-late game is non existant. Its damage at early stages got nerfed also so it's even more unimpactful.

You have 15% increased tenacity and also tenacity aura from spirit of the ancient golem. If the enemies target you with spells that you would otherwise need to cleanse, then your team should have no problems finishing of the enemy team while they focus you down.

Does nothing, you will probably never run out of mana and the members of your team that need mana will most likely have a stacked tear into seraph's embrace/muramana, an athene's unholy grail or other tanky mana items like frozen heart/iceborn gauntlet.

If you need extra vision, always buy sightstone. If someone needs to get that spell in your team, that must be your support.

You are a tank, you should have enough tankyness that you can sustain a lot of damage even without barrier. If they blow everything on you, your team wins the fight unless you have been caught off.

Same with barrier, however it's more useful as it's a team oriented spell. Have your support take it in case exhaust isn't needed.

0 utility, only used for trolling your teammates. If you die it's either won fight or lost fight, you won't make the difference by being alive, unless it's only their nexus up, the respawn timer is 1minute and a double ace occurs (!)

If level 1 happens: >> (Make sure you get a lot of help on your first buff.)

Maxing first: This is your primary spell for jungle clearing, the shield it gives on its second rank is what keeps nautilus unharmed between camps and also does a lot of damage early on combined with red buff.

Maxing second: Pretty solid spell during ganks, it is essential that you max it second because its slowing effect can go up to 50% which is going to secure a lot of kills and turn team fights in your favour with its peeling power.

Maxing last: From my experience, the reduction of the cooldown of this spell when maxing it second is not noticable, however since this is the champion's bread and butter skill, you should always put a point at it between levels 3-4.

Skills

Staggering Blow

Nautilus' passive is a form of crowd control itself as it roots in place the target for a short amount of time with an autoattack. Note that it can and should be used on multiple targets during skirmishes/teamfights whenever possible. Note that its duration was buffed a bit.
With the recent buffs (4.11), it became even stronger and easier to spot.

Dredge Line

Projectile Speed: 2000
Nautilus' signature ''hook'' move. This ability serves as a great initiation tool, canceling channeling abilities and also chasing/escaping by hooking on terrain. However, it doesn't do almost any damage and it offers only utility, therefore it's maxed last since the CDR reduction of level-ups isn't that heavy to justify it.
Range indicator
Note that the actual range of this ability is a bit longer than the range indicator.

Titan's Wrath

Nautilus' Shield is his primary source of clearing the jungle/farming. Furthermore, it is a primary damage source during ganks early on in the game as it does tons of damage combined with red buff. Try to proc it as many times on the enemy as possible as the dot is pretty strong by itself. Note that when your shield is down, your autoattack damage is non-existant so it is not sometimes worth to autoattack and simply run (escape/chase) unless you have red buff on. It's also noteworthy that it scales with HP, synergizing with the overall itemization.

Riptide

This AoE slow helps finishing of the small creeps on the jungle camps as well as slowing enemies by a significant amount during ganks/team fights. This spell's cooldown becomes really short with the CDR stacking that I propose and it must be spammed during a team fight, securing almost perma slows which allows for easy proc of passive/hooks. Try to hit as many people as possible all the time, don't consider it as a damaging tool as it does too low, it's most of the times better to chase for an autoattack with W up instead of trying to hit this spell during ganks.
Range indicator

Depth Charge

Depth Charge is a great initiating tool that can decide a fight even from its beginning. Its potential multiple knockup is pretty strong, let alone it being a targeted ability and also undodgable/uncleansable. I usually try to position it so that I can hit the maximal amount of people with it but this depends on the enemy team members' statuses. If they have overfed carries target them directly, not caring about multiple knockups. Try to follow the ultimate up with an passive procing autoattack preferably, otherwise a Dredge Line (Q) into Ripite (E) and then the auto.
Range indicator

Runes(Explained)

These runes are the most ideal for nautilus in my opinion.

MARKS

Attack speed: These are by far the most superior marks for nautilus overall, the attack speed gives you the chance to put down more damage on jungle camps with your Titan's Wrath(W) aswell as when ganking.

Magic Penetration: As a primary magical damage dealer, magic penetration helps in the maximal damage output of your spells. Even when you don't run any sort of ap items, your spells will do some decent damage early in the game.

Hybrid Penetration: On par, if not stronger, than the magic penetration ones, as your autoattacks will hit harder at your first few ganks until the laners get some armor.

SEALS

Health: Flat 72 health that I personally prefer over health/level as I want to be as strong as possible during the early game.

Health/level: 1.33 health/level meaning 12 health at level 1 and a total of 216 at level 18 which is a huge boost compared to the flat 72 health at level 1 that you can achieve by flat health seals. Close call between scaling and flat, comes down to personal preferance.

Armor/level: +0.16 armor/level (27 armor at lvl18) is the third best choice at this moment as you don't really get much help at the early clears which is the weak point of Nautilus.

Armor: After the nerfs these have fallen out of favour and should generally be avoided as they get outscaled by all of the above.

Magic Resist: I've tried these once when the enemy team had a veigar mid, a rumble top and a fiddlesticks jungle and I have to say that it worked out insanely well. Only picked during such cases though.

GLYPHS

Magic resist/level: These are my first option although not always essential in case of full ad team. The scaling mr makes you durable against mages as the game goes on and they get stronger.

Flat magic resist: Good when trying to counter strong magic damage early in the game, for example when diving a level 6 Le Blanc. However, they get outscaled around level 9-10 by Magic resist/level.

Reduced Cooldowns: Another strong choice, 8% CDR from runes combined with the 4% CDR from Sorcery will bring you at a 12% CDR level 1. That combined with the 20% CDR you get from the Ancient Golem buff will take you to the astonishing 32% CDR when you hit level 2 making your W have a 13.4sec cooldown just on the 2nd rank while you maintain the buff, let alone your Riptide skill which will be on a 5.8sec cooldown

Flat AP: Great for early game damage as you will hit 14=15 AP at level 3-4 when you are supposed to gank.

QUINTESSENCES

Movement Speed: This is by far the best option overall for Nautilus, as his 325 base movemevent speed is ridiculously low for a jungle and needs a boost through runes in order to take advantage of his early game.

Flat Armor: The extra 13 armor that you get from this set will make the use of health potions trivial and could possibly allow you to go for a Machete-2x HP pots-1 ward start which is pretty good when the enemies run a strong counter jungler like lee sin, nocturne or shaco that relies on physical damage.

Flat Health: Okish choice, 78 health won't make or break on any point of the game other than level 1 fights or a level 2-3 tower dive on a 1v2 lane.

Flat AP: If you plan on running a runepage based on AP for Nautilus in the jungle, you must take these along with flat AP glyphs. 15 AP combined with 11 AP from seals and the AP per level from Blast will make your riptide do TONS of damage and make you a force to be reckoned during early-mid game.

Runesets:

Counter Invasion Page:

AP with attack speed Page:

Normal Mage Page

CDR Page

Smite

One of the most important reasons ranked games are lost is due to objectives like baron and less importantly on dragon. I've been blamed many times for getting outsmited but, despite the fact that many people call smiting an art, I strongly disagree.

So to make it impossible to get outsmited, before any major objective and depending on your teammates' level, ask them to burst it at 1500-2000 hp, this way you know when to react and smite whereas random burst damage from the enemy team can put you off guard.

UPDATE: With the preseason changes, smite does less damage early on so you need to take that into account. Always use it on the first camp before the first buff and it will be for your second buff. If you decide to go for the blue enchantment, make sure to use it first during a gank so that you can come in range and follow with an AA passive proc.

CHILLING SMITE: Smite can be cast on enemy champions, dealing 20 + (8 × level) true damage and stealing 20% of their movement speed for 2 seconds.
A new addition to season 5 jungle, makes ganks easier by slowing and damaging the target and giving you 20% of their movement speed. In my opinion not so useful on Nautilus since you have a lot of cc already, but could help the new players a lot. Requires

Smite range and smitesteal spot (outdated):

Here is also a list with the smite values(s5 updated) that you should be familiar with when jungling if not precisely, at least approximately.

Item Builds(Explained)

Starting items+//
With the introduction of the preseason 4 jungle changes, trinkets are now available at lvl1 and can be used after 1:30 in the game. Until now, I've been using the warding trinket to be able to avoid invades from strong counterjunglers. However, the sweeping lens should outscale it vastly if the enemy jungler is of equal early game strength.
As mentioned in the runes section, go for Machete-2x Health pots-Ward when you run armor seals and quintessences.

First buy (750g)
You need the boots asap aswell as the spirit stone for mana and health regen it offers, speeding up your jungling.

Rush these//->/->/->
This is the core build on jungle nautilus. It offers 30% CDR(+5% from masteries) along with strong amounts of HP, Health Regen, Armor and Magic Resist. Boots of mobility will make your ganks so much easier while spirit of the ancient golem will give you the tenacity you would miss by going mobility boots along with a bunch of health and 10% CDR. Make sure to use it's passive gold bonus effectively by alternating between ganking and farming.Aegis->Locket is a strong aura item that you must build instead of your support while he focuses on warding. It gives you Health, Armor while the aura provides the team with Armor, Magic Resist and Health Regen. Despite the removal of bulwark, it is still the best option to build an aegis as it will also give you the active of the locket as you upgrade it along with the valuable 10% cdr.
Aura radius:

Active Shield radius:Warden's mail->Randuin's is the standard anti-ad carry item that you must have during mid/late game as it reduces the attack speed of enemies hitting you by 15% and movement speed by 10% for 1 seconds. Cost was also reduced to 3000 down from 3100 with 3.10 patch.Spectre's Cowl->Spirit Visage with the rework on Spirit Visage, it now gives more Health, Health Regen, more MR and also 10% CDR. Although Nautilus can't utilise its passive at its maximum (only the Health Regen part), this item is cost efficient even without the passive. Note that if you need early MR you can just get the negatron cloak early on and then wait until later in the game to decide if you need to build it into an abyssal scepter, a spirit visage or a banshee's veil.

Situational items

Pretty nice item against double ad carry teams, heavy damage bruisers like jax, rengar, yi. This item has a unique passive: On being hit by basic attacks, returns 30% of damage, before any reductions such as armor, as magic damage along with 100 armor.

A good item in terms of both damage(burning DoT on enemies standing near you) and survivability(HP+armor). However, your tankiness is decent enough with locket and it's only a personal preferance.
Aura Radius:

Warmog's is a solid item on every tanky jungler, tons of hp and health regen, especially for nautilus since his shield scales with health (extra 100 hp on it with warmog's).

If you feel your team is lacking vision, this is the perfect buy for you, providing you with 5 wards every time you hit your team's fountain and from which you can have only 3 placed at a time. Also pretty sick hp coming along with this item.

->

A strong item along with locket, spirit visage for countering of heavy AP team compositions. The shield it provides is not particularly useful for nautilus since he will soak many spells during the course of poking or fighting but this item combines health and magic resist, stats which are all useful for nautilus. With the 3.10 patch, it gives massive health regen for a short amount of time after taking damage along with more mr and health while no longer granting mana, at an extra cost of 250 gold.

Higher damage items

MR shred in a radius along with free AP and MR, solid buy overall vs AP teams when your team consists of a strong mage or is aswell a double AP team.
Aura Radius:

Strong item overall for damaging purposes, decent health, magic penetration and health percentage damage which will be obvious at team fights if your spells and particularly your Riptide(E) hits most of the enemy team since the damage will be doubled because of movement impairing effects. However, it's quite expensive and should only be considered when snowballing hard. Since Nashor's Tooth is equivalent in gold, this seems like a better purchase due to % damagea and flat health/AP it offers. Go for it as a 6th item when Wit's End isn't optimal due to AD team comps.

If you are snowballing, consider buying this item, making farming really fast, giving you stacking MR on autoattacks and 42% attack speed along with flat MR. After Nashor's Tooth nerf based on jungling nautilus criteria, this is an ideal buy as a 6th damage item since it also steals magic resist from the target(stacking).

This item isn't as strong as it was prior to 3.8 patch, due to the increase in gold cost by 420. The nwe passive added to the item doesn't help nautilus by a whole lot since you should not be building standard mage items.

Other Viable Items

A decently strong item, however based on personal preference I am almost always building Randuin's Omen as my attack speed decreasing item. You can get the 20% CDR from Spirit Visage and you just trade mana for Health.

Frozen Heart Aura Radius:

Another good item on Nautilus with a sick passive for ganks. It has low cost and gives you some Magic resist, Ability Power and Movement Speed along with a great active that sends 2 shadows towards enemy champions and when they reach them, they get slowed down making it easy for you to land Dredge line and the rest of your spells.
Get it early on after your spirit of the ancient golem rush and most likely sell it later on unless you see it as a potential engaging tool against a team without escapes.

If you plan of building Nautilus with an AP core along with tankiness, this should be your starting item as you'll need to have it stacked to make full use of its potential. It gives a very good amount of mana, HP and AP along with sustain in the jungle during level ups when it's still on the catalyst level.
I rarely build it however as i like to build nautilus around resistances.

In some of my games, I sell mobility boots for ninja tabi later on in the game to counter heavy autoattacking teams when I have to soak all the damage. These situations are the same mentioned on the thornmail description.

If you feel like you need even more damage in case you have weak late game heroes like an urgot/corki/mf as ad carry or a mage like brand, heimer, janna, le blanc or zilean, don't be afraid to sell your boots and go for this. It gives ad, attack speed, movement speed and 10% cdr along with tenacity unique passive which is trivial as it doesn't stack with spirit of the ancient golemn.

DO NOT FORGET
During late game make sure to purchase the following for further utility:+//

Early Game

LEVEL1
Usually, when I play Nautilus, I prefer to just defend my buffs instead of forcing a level 1 invade/fight. However, if your team decides to go for one, DO NOT skill up any ability until the opportunity for a catch arises. Most of the times my team goes for first blood, an autoattack that procs my passive snare is just enough to secure the kill.
However, if an extended level 1 fight occurs, you need to skill up your Dredge Line(Q) mostly or Riptide(E) in rare occasions. Remember that by default you can skill up an ability with Ctrl+Q/W/E/R, you must be able to react fast and skill up->use it in time.
When fighting level 1, you are not the tank, that means that you shouldn't go balls deep and tank the damage the enemy team puts on you, you just can't do it. Ideally, you want to cast Dredge Line(Q) on anyone you can (unless they have alistar) and snare him. You should have taken about 2 spells by then. At that time, run around close to your teammates and snare with your autoattack but don't get kited too deep into the enemy team. If the fight takes more than 18sec, go for another Dredge Line(Q).

Rest of early game(15-20minutes)
Early game for nautilus is likely the most important part of his gameplay, especially during soloq. Try to make as many ganks as possible, countergank the enemy jungler, force dragon after successful bot lane ganks. Try to give your lanes the advantage so that the game will go on smoothly during the mid/late stages. Don't forget about turrets, they are the most important objectives and those can lead to significant gold margins.

When ganking you should always try to come from behind (as show on the images below) so that you can initiate with passive procing autoattack. Then go with the autoattack reseting Titan's Wrath(W) followed by Riptide(E). By that time the enemy laner will have lost most of his HP and will be ready to Flash. When he flashes, you need to hit your Dredge Line(Q) on him, that's what differentiates the top nautilus players from the casual ones.

A really important part that can set back your ganks are minion waves!An incoming minion wave can potentially mess up your ganks completely, blocking your Dredge Line(Q) if you want to initiate with it or when you want to catch up with the target after a Flash.

Jungling/Ganking routes

These are the routes I use the most when playing nautilus, both emphasizing on the most efficient level 4 reach and then ganking 2 out of the 3 possible lanes.With 3.10 patch, wolves, wraiths and golems now spawn at 2:05 so you can't do them before the buffs. However, this exp loss is compensated via extra exp from the buffs, so you do one camp less for the same exp but you get less gold of course. Note the with this patch, you don't hit lvl2 anymore just from the neutral monster xp and you'll need full exp from at least 1 of the small lizards.

Blue start with top-mid level 4 gank:

Red start with mid-bot level 4 gank:

Make sure to go as close the the wall when passing through the river, most supports tend to ward only tribush so you won't be spotted by using this pathway.
Also, with the preseason patch, warding of botlane is very limited until the first back due to shield+1 ward start so use it to your advantage and give your botlane an early lead. The lane will be pushed on one side most likely due to the execution that the shield offers so be ready to gank/countergank.

Also, notice that i do not include the new camp in my jungling route. This is due to the fact that it has massive hp and it takes loads of time to clear it while dealing very much damage to you. Only do it if there is no ganking opportunity and there is nothing left up in your jungle for the next 10sec or so.

Ganking Synergy

These are some of the champions that are great to gank for when playing Nautilus as they can create the gank themselves, making escapes without flashing/using of certain ultimates unavoidable.

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When ashe lands the arrow, you can just walk through bot lane and cast your ultimate/dredge line/autoattack snare and stunlock the enemy down for a free kill. That kind of gank can also be performed in other lanes if the arrow hits from bot->mid/top/river.

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Ganking for Gragas at level 6 is really easy if he can use his Explosive Cask properly to throw the enemy towards you. Then perform your skillset and it should be a secured kill.

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Coordinate with him to throw his acceleration gate down (clear the minion wave with Shock Blast) and you can pass through it making it inevitable for the enemy laner to outrun you without using summoners/ultimate/big escape spells.

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Similarly with Gragas, tell him to ward-jump kick the enemy laner towards you. This can be tricky depending on Lee Sin's skill level.

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Exactly the same with Jayce, however lacks the burst damage early on and might result in a possible escape.

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Same mentality with Gragas/Lee Sin, just tell him to pop ghost/ulti and slow->fling the enemy back while doing sustain damage together with your CC/damage, scoring a free kill most likely.

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Exactly the same with Singed.

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You rarely see him, but ganking for a level 6 warwick is most likely the easiest gank as his ultimate is a targeted spell and can only be countered by that noone builds until later in the game. Although his damage is mediocre, it should be enough to score a kill on the enemy laner early between level 6-10.

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Thresh can be your gap closer when ganking for bot lane by using his lantern in case he lands a good hook or gets close to the enemy by running into him. By this way you can catch the enemies completely off guard and force summoner spells/ultimates or score kills.

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Nami's ultimate has a huge range and can hardly be outrun so you can just run through the lane and when the wave lands on the enemies and her bubble knockup goes up you should be in range to perform your skills.

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Exactly the same with Jayce, tell her to pop her ultimate and then just chase.

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Urgot lanes are a joke to gank, his damage in lane is out of the roof and he can just bring the enemy to you by switching positions with him. When I see urgot, I camp his lane at level 6 as a fed urgot can carry hard in soloq with his tankyness.

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Quite similar with Ashe with the difference that his ultimate has short range. Other than that it's practically the same in execution.

HORRIBLE LANES TO GANKIf enemy team has:
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He can't push the lane so it's hard to gank him pre level 6, he has a flash every 6 secs or so after level 6 and if he wards properly past level 6 you just can't touch him at all. If he isn't warding, take advantage of his offensive riftwalks and kill him.

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Similar to kassadin with the exception that her shunpo has a higher cooldown than Kassadin's riftwalk and she can push the lane much easier. You can gank her easily if she doesn't have wards for shunpo and the minion wave has passed

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You won't see her unless it's a dedicated Poppy player. Make sure to gank her before she hits 6(even that is difficult because she can just charge on you if you come from behind and then leave unharmed) as she's hardly harmed when she pops her ultimate on you since you are the only one that can damage her.

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You must gank him before he hits 6. After level 6 you can only hope that your laner can force his ultimate during 1v1 and then gank him or you must gank him 2 times in a row, making him use his ultimate during the first gank.

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Ganking a Veigar that wards is close to impossible, as he'll never play far ahead enough from his tower when his stun is down.

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The ganking potential is similar to that of Veigar's. However, if she's level 6, she can just pop her ultimate on herself making her invulnerable and able to react/wait for her E cooldown for a couple of seconds. That combined with her melee range root and Q slow can stop your agression.

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No CC(his pool should never be used as a CC form, if countergank happens he's dead), low damage, only has some burst with R->E->Q combo at level 6. Gank will not work if he hasn't poked the enemy laner low enough allowing you to deal enough damage to finish him off. If the enemy laner starts building MR items like abyssal, spirit visage, hexdrinker, wits end, going to his lane is close to pointless, just let him farm for mid-late game when it's his strong phase.

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Ganking for heimerdinger is totally pointless, unless he can position his turrets properly so that when the enemy retreats, the UPGRADE! is popped and he takes tons of damage. Other than that, just let him outfarm the enemy laner. Make sure to ward his lane as he can be easily ganked.

Mid Game

When the first few towers are down, you and your team need to start going for the pick off kills/dragons. Nautilus is especially good at this since the range of his Dredge Line(Q) is somewhat bigger than most people expect and can catch them off guard.

Help with warding/dewarding dragon and baron, force teamfights in your favour. Don't fall into the baron trap unless their jungler is down and your gold lead allows for it. Remember that baron hits like a track at the earlier stages even if you have core items like locket of the iron solari and spirit of the ancient golem. If you feel that you need to deny vision to the enemies so you can catch them offguard with Dredge Line(Q), get a couple of pink wards or sweep some spots with your oracle's lens (oracle's elixir got removed from the game).

When you take the advantage start warding deep into the enemy jungle so that you can make efficient pushes/pickoffs when you see someone out of position when he doesn't know.

Remember that drag is still the most important objective until the 30 minute mark so try and not give any of them away for free. Same goes for towers.

Late Game

Late game(40+ minutes) is all about baron nashor and inhibitors.

At this point you should have your core build combined with 1 more item at least. It's about time your team must change their warding trinkets and go for oracle's lens to deny as much vision as possible. Also consider , a really cost efficient item for more wards. Remember that each person can put up to 3 wards on the map at the same time so it is really a team affair to ward up the map after laning phase.

If you have proper ward coverage, you should start pushing the lanes as a team, remember that in soloq play many games are lost because of not grouping up (Do NOT use smite under any circumstances for just farming and pushing a lane, this can be a sign the enemy team can take advantage of and start baron).And here comes the tower sieging.

What I've noticed in many of my games is that nautilus is particularly good at tower sieging. Try to go for grabs when the enemy carries are trying to clear the wave off the tower. When/If you hit Dredge Line(Q), you need to be really fast with the rest of the combo so they have 0 reaction time.
Dredge Line(Q) lands, followed by an instant Depth Charge(R) while being mid air and then an autoattack proccing the passive snare together with the autoattack resetting Titan's Wrath(W) will give your teammates enough time to finish the person you caught unless you hook a wrong target. In that case, disengage with Riptide(E).

At that stage of the game most teams consider attempting to kill Baron nashor at the so called baron dances.
When Baron Dancing, there are a couple of things you MUST do as a team:

When clearing wards especially in the baron pit, you need to have a ward placed on the outside of the pit in case you are the blue side team to avoid any dangerous situations. Those revolve around certain champions the enemy team might have such as blitzcrank/thresh (you don't wanna get hooked into 5 enemy team members or get initiated inside the baron pit in the case of thresh as things might not work our that well because of his ultimate) or even an anivia that can trap you with her Crystallize(W) inside the baron pit while she aggros the baron that will target you since you are the closest member.

Keep warding. Since oracle's are not in the game anymore, your wards can be swept up to a certain extent. Pink wards can be killed with 5 autoattacks so they are not totally reliable and as a result, you can always keep a considerable amount of vision up in the map.

Important note: In case you have chosen teleport over flash and you want to splitpush to cause further confusion to the enemy team, make sure your team has a tanky bruiser with some sort of health items that can soak some damage while you are teleporting in a scenario that the enemy team engages upon your. Splitpushing with a team of 4 squishes means that they can just hard initiate against them and by the time you land with your teleport, the fight might be 4v5 or 3v5. Also try to build an attack speed item like wit's end or nashor's tooth which will facilitate splitpushing by a lot.

Team Fights

Before you team fight, you must concider the following:

What spells the enemies have available (Summoners, aoe ultimates/globals, a leap/escape spell that might be on cooldown, passives like anivia's, zac's). If big aoe ultimates/ globals are down or the flashes of the carries are burnt, this is your chance to engage on good terms.

What spells your team has available. Your big aoe ultimates/ globals are down or the flashes of your teams' carries are burnt is a sign to turtle until at least the ultimates are available.

Someone of the enemy team is dead. This is by itself enough to engage a team fight since a 5v4 is always gonna be in your favour unless you do important mistakes like missed ultimates/fail flashes/too deep tower dives.

Health bars! This is closely related with the above point as low hp targets can't commit to the team fight as hard as full hp ones.

Approximately the difference in gold. Take into accounts turrets, dragons, barons, farm and team kills (score might be 30-10 in favour of one team but the gold margin is significantly closer than it looks on scoreboard due to ojectives, farm). This is not a major deciding factor especially in soloq games but it can help due to the difference in item builds, however soloq is a place where individual skill shines the most.

Item builds/Big items completed. I'd like to demonstrate this with an example. Your ad carry has bloodthirster and infinity edge while the enemy ad carry has bloodthirster, a bf sword and a pickaxe. Although he might have the gold to finish his infinity edge, he hasn't based to get it and therefore is a great chance to pull of a fight as your ad carry will deal quite a bit more damage. Also, you can judge how much damage you can take by spotting penetration items on the enemy team.

Map Control. If you think that there are confirmed blind spots in the enemy map (usually via pink wards/oracle's lens) that they might step through. It is worth setting up a trap which might be enough to win a game alone in a possible 5-0 ace. Also, if you see someone through a ward in the enemy jungle farming far away from the rest, it is worth trying to force a team fight even if it's not in the best possible terms for your team (forced towerdive). You might not come really far ahead, but every advantage counts.

Last but not least, team comps. Try to evaluate who has the edge CC wise, damage wise and at which position each team comp shines. For example, if the enemy team has a rumble, it is not ideal to fight in the jungle as there are tight spots that can put your team into great disadvantage with a proper Equalizer (rumble's R).

What can Nautilus offer to a team fight

First and foremost, Crowd Control. This can be either offensive or defensive. However, to play the role of a support tank CC bot that Nautilus is efficiently , you need to compile both of them in the course of a team fight. Remember to use your Titan's Wrath(W) and (E) on cooldown over the course of the fight.
Secondly, a great initiation kit with either Dredge Line(Q), Depth Charge(R) or in rare occasions his passive snare (requires an enemy team member to be out of position).
Situationally, he provides the team with some sort of damage if he's being built accordingly.

Since Nautilus has so strong engagements, your aim should be on initiating the fight by a Dredge Line(Q) hook. Don't be afraid to use your flash for a long range hook if it's a priority target. From personal experience, rarely a fight is lost when a Nautilus engages since his ability to position himself in the middle of the enemy team and peel for his carries. That doesn't mean that when being engaged you are in a great disadvantageous spot but it means that your position won't be ideal and your peeling power not at its full potential. Moreover, non-experienced players may panic in case they get engaged by a hook resulting in wrong reactions and in an edge for your team in the fight. When you get yourself in the middle of the enemy team, you should use your Riptide(E) followed up by Randuin's Omen active and the shield from Locket of the Iron Solari. The more you hit with Riptide and the randuin's active, the more free space you give to your team to escape/chase depending on the champions your team is composed of. Spam your shield(W) on cooldown for max sustain during the fight. Autoattack as much as possible to make the most out of your passive snare as it can make landing skillshots easy and peel for the carries/lock down priority targets. Your Dredge Line(Q) is a great displacement tool during team fights so use it in such a way. Make sure you prioritise its use to interrupt suppression ultimates like Warwick's or Malzahar's, to bring out of the team's high aoe damage targets like fiddlesticks/kennen and grab the bruisers away from your ad or ap carry in that order. When you see a clear shot at their carries after the above have been succeeded, never hesitate.

What about
When using the ultimate during team fights, you should consider a few things like: how many your are going to hit with it, does the enemy has any invisibility that can deny vision during the knockup, can you/your allies get to the enemy when the depth charge finally lands? All these make Depth Charge a spell that depends entirely on the player's view of the fight and it's necessity. Usually I prioritise using it when I see the enemy team somewhat clamped up. However, there are certain situations that your ultimate should have a designated target (always depending on how fed/underfed they are). Those include assassin-type champions like zed, khazix, kassadin, katarina, talon and diana along with hypercarries(ad carries) like vayne(small range) or twitch(no escapes).

On assassins cases, wait till the enemy jumps on your carry and then CC him to death by chain your spells in fast sequence. If you use the ultimate before they go in, they will move away till the knockup hits them since most of them have an escape spell(except talon and diana).
In the case of the mentioned ad carries, I usually use my ultimate as some sort of zoning, most of the times at the beginning of the fights, giving my carries the space to clear the rest of the enemy team.

What if they have both an assassin and a hypercarry?
Then, you should save the ultimate for the assassin. It is always easier fighting a 5v4 than a 5v5 with an enemy target zoned for like 3-4seconds. Ideally, you would want to flash-Dredge Line(Q) the enemy ad carry as soon as the assasin is dead in case you haven't used your flash to engage.

Poke comps
I've seen a proper poke comp in soloq only a couple of times(meaning that the enemy team has at least a disengagement method to support it like a janna or an alistar). However, it shouldn't be an issue for Nautilus due to his strong engaging toolset. You will never be engaged and thus all your attention should be on placing and clearing the wards that will aid in avoiding the poke. When you see an opportunity to go in, do it as there is no teamfight power on the oppossing side. Having items like shurelya's, twin shadows and a couple of sightstoners along with oracles lens among the team members helps a lot in emerging victorious.

General Jungling Tips

Start from red if they have a strong counter jungler like mundo, olaf, lee, shyvana, nocturne, udyr, shaco.

If you note the jungler out of position during certain time stamps during early game (7:05-7:10 enemy blue spawn, Â¬8:20 enemy red spawn, +5-6 on every next one), go for their buffs. It doesn't mean that since nautilus can be invaded, he can't invade when there's the chance.

Buy wards. Especially vs strong junglers you need the wards to protect yourself and your laners. Remember το ward drake if they have a jungler that can solo it like nasus, fiddlesticks, lee sin, shaco.

Keep timers on buffs/dragon/baron. A good trick is to pink the lizzard/golem just before the die and you'll have the timestamp on your chat (make sure you have it enabled from the options). Useful abbreviations: oB(our blue), oR(our red), tB(their blue), tR(their red), d(dragon).You can take keeping timers to a different level by timing enemy champions' summoner spells like flash approximately as there are masteries/item enchantments that reduce those cooldowns by a few seconds.

Try to always start at the buff closer to your bot lane. A smiteless leash is a big bonus for every jungler.

Always have health pots ticking during your first clear. You need to be close to full health at all time in order to be able to react to any situation that might arise (countergank/invade) and deal with it properly.

Pull the lizzard/golem into the bushes. The biggest mistake many junglers do during early game is to just facetank the neutral buff monsters while the enemy jungler waits at the bush and just smites it away. By pulling it into the bush you can spot the enemy jungler and deny him that chance. CHECK THE BUSH BEFORE YOU PULL THE BUFF IN CASE OF ONE OF THE JUNGLERS LISTED IN THE MATCHUPS BELOW (buffs do tons of damage early game).

Push the lane after a succesful gank(killing the enemy or forcing him out of lane). By that you and your laner get exp advantage and the creeps while the enemy laner loses all the farm from the tower and the exp that comes with it, along with some tower damage.

Map awareness. Last but not least, this is the biggest trait a jungler can have. Being able to see the enemy wards when they are being placed is a big bonus as you know from where you can gank. Try to inform your laners about possible enemy ganks since they will be focused on csing and might not notice the precense of the enemy jungler. Moreover, by playing a lot of games as jungler you can understand where the enemies will try to gank and be prepared to react.

Matchups

Although i think that jungling matchups are irrelevant since it's not a lane matchup but can spread across the whole map and depend on the early game strenght/awareness of your laners, you should be really aware of the following champs:

Nocturne has tons of damage early game with red buff. Try to not be at engaging distance with him until you have some tanky items. However, if he finds you, make sure that you position yourself properly. Land one autoattack for the snare, go in front of him and then throw your dredge line to a wall to escape. If he manages to position his body in front of you so that he can block the dredge line, then you might be forced to use a summoner flash.

Lee sin is pretty similar with Nocturne with the difference that he can catchup anytime if he hits his skillshot Q. A pretty smart choice would be to start with your red buff and bait his potential invade, wasting his time.

Shaco is a real terror for nautilus he can steal your red pretty fast and then leave unharmed. Ask for a ward at drag/baron from the support since most shacos tend to decieve over the dragon/baron pits and then steal the red. However the most ideal would be to start on red to counter all of his plans. Be really aware of the animation of his decieve, it can help you react to situations faster.

While Mundo is not seeing so much play lately, he can still do the counterjungling business effectively. In addition to the fact that he can chase you down no matter what you do with his cleavers, early warding is mandatory so that you wont be shut down.

Jungle olaf came back to life after the recent buffs. Like he did in the past, he still destroy nautilus if 1 axe hits, his early game damage is really strong and his true damage even more terrorising with a couple of doran's blades. Compulsory to start at red, you can't afford to let an olaf snowball you.

Nunu jungle got nerfed but he is still a king counterjungler. He has a powerful kit which of course falls a bit late game but can be so disruptive for the enemy junglers(like sejuani, nautilus) and lanes that it compensates for it. First of all, his sustain in the jungle is immense with his consume-heal therefore he can start with a ward and counterjungle freely. He can just use a couple of ice blasts (E) along with few autoattacks and then consume-smite your lizzard buff at about 2:20 if he got a good leash. Make sure to always ask for ward on the buff you are not starting on. However, if your lanes are weak, it still doesn't matter as they probably won't be able to help you even if they see him in their jungle as they will be pushed into their turrets.

Elise jungle is in my opinion the strongest jungler in soloq at this point. She is a really strong duelist, loses almost no hp during camps due to spider tanking and her gank kit is really strong with 1 long and 1 short gap closer, a skillshot stun that isn't grabbing turret aggro. She can destroy you in the jungle as she can jump into you even if you dredge line away on the terrain with her E in spider form, she can CC you and burst you down really fast with her % of health damaging spells. Ideally ban elise or ask for a ban on her to be safe as she is a dominant force in every lane she can go.

Yes, she's back and is one of your worst nightmares if she decides to fuck you up instead of afk farming everything. She might be a weak ganker but she's incredibly tanky and can do tons of damage with E->Q combo if it hits. If she gets going she will snowball hard the entire game as she will be unkillable and tower diving your lanes all the time. If she decides to afk farm, you can only stay close to her exp-goldwise by spam ganking successfully and then hope that your team will be fed enough to be able to kill her, Peel for your carries in team fights as she will be diving them most of the time.

Gameplay

Game on my alt account ''Bobflannigans'' around 1800 elo(renamed Elo Machine), enemy team is bad and they quit after a point but you can see the way I gank/countergank.

S4 High elo Jungle(been a long time since I played jungle and nautilus so excuse some missed hooks)

Change Log

22/5: Updated early game chapter with information on ganking.

25/5: Extra jungling tips. Added ganking tips on the early game chapter.

Final Comments

I hope you enjoyed reading the guide and picked up a couple of things from it concerning the champion himself or the general conception of support junglers. If there is anything else you disliked/ would like to see included, post it in the comments along with your questions. If you want to watch more of my jungle/mid gameplay, make sure to watch me on twitch.tv (www.twitch.tv/panost).
Have a nice day and good luck with your endeavours in Summoners' rift.

Comments

Not all games can be won no matter how good you are. The best thing you can do in such games where all lanes lose to straight up is to decide who can have a greater impact in the game later on and help his lane extensively or who won't be able to recover even if you help him so that you can pretty much leave him on his own. That's my mindset when playing utility junglers, when playing the likes of lee sin, elise, rengar or kha'zix i try to feed myself so i can ultimately carry by myself.
Good to see you have some immediate results, hope I gave you some food for thought with my reply too.

This guide is great. Im still a new League player and still learning the jungle. I really like utility champs and Nautilus is right up my alley. This is what this guide did for me:

http://imgur.com/vbIS1Oz.jpg

I did have a few bad games. Definitely a learning experience. The 4-0-23 was my first one though! How do you play Nautilus if multiple, if not all, lanes are losing? If just one is, I find I can kinda camp it to help them out. But the bad games I have had lanes are losing hard and there just isn't much a juggernaut from the abyss can do.

@Slow2Serious The only problem with this route is that you will take A LOT of unnecessary damage since your smite will be down until red buff is very low on hp. However, you can go the usual blue->wraiths/wolves->red and then gank bot lvl3 at about the same time if not faster. Your first gank will probably force just a heal or a heal+flash unless they are heavily poked down which is unlikely by that time or you have a thresh/leona/morg that land their skillshot in proper timing. You need to be careful when to gank that lane again though as in case of a countergank you might have less damage compared to the currently trending junglers. Time summoners in such cases to have a better idea on when it would be ideal to gank again and always ward sufficiently (1 ward/recall + ward trinket till lvl10 is usually fine).

Great guide I've been using for over a year. What do you think about "blue-red-wraiths-golems-bot gank" start route? You'll hit lv3 by then, and if enemy lane tends to be agressive early (like Taric and Caitlyn from my last match), they probably would push lane to your side, where you can make a succsessful gank.The point is that they won't usually expect you to come that early, and it'll catch'em off guard, as they're rather focused on lane agression. If you succeed, you may almost forget about botlane unless they make some huge mistakes, and only come there when you want YOUR dragon.

Hey, thanks for your comment.
Let me start by clarifying 2 things. Firstly, i havent tried the most out of the new jungle/nautilus and s4 patch in general as it's pointless playing much soloq at this time due to many trolls/exams of mine. Secondly, what you mention about elo ranges is massive in my opinion. I will most likely go a 9/21/0 page in gold/low plat range, you need to carry these games by yourself, secure kills for yourself, build even 2 semi-offensive items. That's how you should raise your elo if you are confident in your skill level.
As i havent expiremented a lot on the tree i cant give you precise answers, but here are my thoughts:
1) Enchanted armor is nothing fantastic even in late game imo in comparison with the flat resistances you get at lower tiers of this tree. However this can be always adjusted. Let me give you an example: Enemy team has ad based mid, a tanky-ad top and a ad based jungler. In that case you are more likely to skip points in mr mastery and its continuation and put them in enchanted armor and it will benefit u a lot more since you will be probably building an aegis, a randuins and a sunfire along with the ancient golemn and potentially ninja tabi later in the game(+160 armor alone). However, in a normal enemy lineup (strong ap mid champion, dont forget also junglers like eve and elise that are popular) you are balancing your stats considering your early game weakness due to champ base stats. This doesnt leave any room for points on a mediocre mastery if you dont stack one stat.
2) I still believe boots of mobility are the absolute best for nautilus at least during laning phase, since with them even if the enemy sees you from a ward a bit late, he can do nothing, no matter how much u get slowed (45 extra movement speed is also great when moving through the map).
3) As i said at the start, always go more offensive if you are confident in your skill level and you know you will snowball hard after 1-2 successful ganks. Remember to take the kills if you think you can carry more than your teammates, even if they are the carries.
4) x/x/21 builds right now are terrible for any jungler imo, the deep defence tree masteries are waaaaaaay too good to go unnoticed. Always go 21 in defence, that's my go to for tanky junglers right now. At the patch launch i was even experimenting with 0/30/0 and i can say that it is also viable.
TL;DR
Too many variations in this patch on defence tree, you can choose according the game/personal preference/builds. Mobility still best for laning phase.
Nautilus at the moment isn't one of my choices when playing at high elo due to many carry junglers around but carries hard lower tiers, even till low diamond.

Any other questions you have i'll be more than happy to answer, sorry but i dont have any other videos since my desktop broke down and i cant record on my laptop. You can expect more updates as far as talents go late january, got limited time atm due to exams period.

Honestly I enjoyed this guide more than most. You address the important/key points concisely and even though this is relatively short as featured guides go, it is an in-depth analysis. Well done. I had a few questions about your mastery section, where you talk about the benefits of taking the masteries you've taken, but I was wondering if you could go into more depth about why you didn't take the other ones. I main nautilus and i've been fiddling with my masteries trying to get a handle on the new pages, there's a lot of options, and i'm on board for most of your picks but I would be interested in a more detailed break-down. For example, it seems like the enchanted armor would be great, especially with 4 points in tenacious, and when it gets to late-game where you have 100+ at least of both resistances, i assume the reason you passed on it is because early game it doesn't really give too much, and we both know how crucial the early game is, right? Also, I personally think the benefit from swiftness helps me with ganks, what have you found with it? I actually have been running 6/21/3 myself, and have had loads of success with it (but bear in mind i'm waaaaaaaay lower rank than you, so the pro-level benefits from taking some masteries are pointless at my ELO) I've been seeing dozens of comments/reddit posts/other guides swearing by the x/x/21 builds, but i think tanky is the correct build for naut. If you have any other game videos i'd watch them, too.